


Living With Ghosts

by alicekittridge



Series: Moments In Time [1]
Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: A whole lotta feelings, Angst, F/F, POV Third Person, Present Tense, Slight Canon Divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:41:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27116260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alicekittridge/pseuds/alicekittridge
Summary: Jamie says, “I didn’t know you prayed.”“I don’t, really,” Dani replies, sparing her only a glance. “I liked Hannah’s method of honoring the dead.”
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Series: Moments In Time [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1982450
Comments: 4
Kudos: 56





	Living With Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> Hello. This show is all I've been able to think of, lately, and I finally got around to writing something decent enough about these two to post. It's a slight canon divergence, but I hope you'll enjoy it all the same, and I hope it won't be the first and last piece I write.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading xx

**I** t’s taken Jamie two years to become a morning person. In another life, when she and others were up before the sun, she was always bewildered at how cheery they were. How could people be happy in the dark and before breakfast? How could they rise and face the day on so little sleep? She had realized, then, that some people were genuine in their morning happiness, while others had to fake it. But two years of rising early and wandering the grounds before anyone else has taught Jamie to find little bits of joy. She recounts them to herself as she makes her way to the rose bushes. _The birdsong. The hovering mist. The crisp of the coolness. The blue light. The way the cathedral looks in that light, with its backdrop of greenery and glowing windows._ She slows her steps. The glowing flickers at the back windows—an unmistakable flicker of candles. Jamie’s thoughts jump immediately to Hannah, whose sleep has been restless for several days, and thinks it strange that she should be up at such a young hour. Usually she lingers upstairs until she’s summoned by the call of muddy footprints.

I’d better say good morning, at least, Jamie thinks. Or blow out the candles she’s always forgettin’.

“Oh,” says Jamie, surprised to find the tiny cathedral occupied not by Hannah, but Dani. She’s nestled in the candle corner, huddled under a thick, mustardy yellow flannel blanket that clashes madly with her shell pink sweater. Her hair is slightly disheveled. A single red candle burns in the holder. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt your zen.”

“It’s okay,” Dani says.

The manor’s grounds are slowly lightening with the rising sun. The mists that cling to the grass and the gravel and the bushes disperse but leave droplets on the windows. A kind of morning that Jamie is familiar with. Dani doesn’t know these mornings. It’s strange to see her in one. Most especially in the aftermath of the previous night’s kiss. But, Jamie tells herself, taking a few hesitant steps towards Dani, it can’t be what she’s thinking about. Jamie says, “I didn’t know you prayed.”

“I don’t, really,” Dani replies, sparing her only a glance. “I liked Hannah’s method of honoring the dead.”

The fiancé, Jamie realizes. “It’s one that doesn’t require large speeches.” Why, Jamie wonders, would she want to honor someone she’s haunted by? When it’s clear that the spectre isn’t a good one?

Dani’s smile is sad. “I could say so much about him,” she says. “So much.”

Jamie shuffles. She feels like she should leave. That she’ll outstay her welcome. “You don’t have to,” she says, already preparing to apologize a second time and be on her way—there are roses that need checking and shrubberies that need trimming—but Dani, rather abruptly, turns to face her, and says, “I think I do.” 

Jamie nods. Seeing as this might take a minute, she carefully sets her buckets by the door and perches herself on a bench, close enough for Dani to bask in her presence, far enough away to be considered professional.

Dani begins, “You said you don’t like being lied to. I didn’t lie last night. At all. I do see him, but it isn’t all the time, it’s just… In certain circumstances.”

Be cautious about this, Jamie reminds herself. It won’t do to have Dani pull sharply away again. “What uh… What sort of circumstances?”

“When I look in the mirror. Or water. Or last night.” Their eyes meet. “His name was Edmund. We all called him Eddie. He was everything a woman’s supposed to want in a man. Smart, kind, humble, handsome, and a family that just adores her and thinks of her in a daughterly way. And I knew I loved him, so _fiercely._ But every time I thought of it, it wasn’t in the way I was supposed to. And now…” She pauses, breathes, steels herself. “Now it feels like all that is hanging over me. Like it’ll crash any second and remind me that I didn’t love him properly because I-I’m damaged. He’s there to remind me of that.” She shakes her head. “He wasn’t very kind, in the end, but I broke his heart. And I think, sometimes, that maybe his dying was actually a mercy. It saved him from feeling all the cracks I caused.”

A long silence stretches between them. The sun has, by now, risen, but it is not gold; it’s ashy. The color of rain. The smell of it seeps into the cathedral, mixing with old wood and stone. Of all things, Jamie knows a few. “You didn’t deserve any of it,” she says quietly. “And maybe he wasn’t the person you were supposed to be with, but you lost a friend, Poppins. That kind of loss doesn’t skip across the surface. It sinks, too. Sometimes deeper.” She wants to take Dani’s hand, if only for solidarity’s sake. “You’ll feel it for a while, but I promise it passes. Just like those ‘supposed to’ feelings you felt about him.”

Dani nods. It means many things, in this context.

“Right,” Jamie says eventually, pushing herself up from the bench. “I’ll leave you to it.”

“We started it wrong, you know,” Dani says when she’s at the cathedral’s door. “Last night.” She rises too, leaving the candle she’d lit burning. It’ll stay lit all day, until the wax builds up enough to smother the flame. “I… want to start it right.”

Outside the door and along the path to the right are the rosebushes. The blooms are full and red. “I know some roses in dire need of a cut,” Jamie says, offering the bucket with the shears and thick gardening gloves. “Don’t go crazy with ‘em.”

Dani takes it from her, her mood seeming already lighter, and together they walk the gravelled path, their shoulders nearly brushing.

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was written to Claude Debussy's "Clair de Lune" 
> 
> \--
> 
> Come say hello, if you'd like to:  
> Twitter: Kate_The_Rabbit  
> Tumblr: kate-the-rabbit


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